The facts behind the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida continue to slowly emerge. I have previously stated that I view critical facts as murky for a prosecution — even though I believe that there was sufficient evidence to arrest George Zimmerman at the scene. While we have still not seen some of the forensic evidence, a new report indicates that police may have based their initial decisions in part on the statement of a witness. We have been discussing the maddening gap in witness testimony at the critical moment of the confrontation. Now a new report suggests that there may have been a witness to the struggle and that witness reportedly told police that it was Martin who was on top of Zimmerman before the fatal shot was fired.
FOX 35 in Orlando says that it has spoken to the witness. The witness reportedly said that
“The guy on the bottom who had a red sweater on was yelling to me: ‘help, help…and I told him to stop and I was calling 911.” Martin was wearing a hoodie that night and Zimmerman was wearing a red shirt or sweater. A friend of Zimmerman has also come forward to say that Zimmerman looked like a mess after the fight and that he recognized Zimmerman as the voice on the 911 call asking people to help him.
An obvious defense case is emerging for a classic self-defense claim. Zimmerman on the 911 tape admits to have shadowed Martin but says it was Martin who was checking him out and moving toward him a threatening fashion. Zimmerman claims that he was attacked when he was returning to his SUV. Police and counsel reported that Zimmerman had cuts on his face and head and appeared to have been in a struggle. Zimmerman was lawfully carrying a handgun was allowed to use the weapon if he was in reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or death. This includes the possible use of the gun in a struggle of control of the weapon.
While the case has been treated as racially motivated, the Zimmerman family has strongly denied such a motivation — noting that he is a hispanic with many African-American friends. Frankly, Zimmerman does closely resemble an alternative profile — that of a defendant in “Castle Doctrine” or “Stand Your Ground” cases. In these controversies, we often see people who are obsessed with crime and in some cases inclined to use lethal force. That does not mean that race did not play a role here. However, it is possible that Zimmerman was motivated by his well-documented obsession with crime as opposed to race. While I understand the sensitivity to the race issue and have my own suspicions concerning the role of race, I believe it is premature to label this a racially motivated crime without more evidence of such a motive. None of this means that Zimmerman should not be charged, but rather than there remain murky elements to the case. We simply need to know more about such motivations. In terms of the state law, we also need more information (particularly forensic evidence) to better gauge the chances of a conviction in the case. I still find the fact that Zimmerman was armed and outweighed Martin to be the most significant. However, this case is still in its earliest stage in terms of development of the evidence and witnesses. Among other things, if a charge is brought, such evidence could push prosecutors toward a manslaughter claim with a lower likely sentence than second or first degree murder. Even with manslaughter, the prosecutors would have to establish the element beyond a reasonable doubt, including the claim of self-defense. Of course, the mere fact that Martin may have gotten the better of Zimmerman in dominating fight at one point does not mean that Zimmerman was not the original aggressor. It will depend on the full range of witness testimony and, again, the missing forensic evidence.
I was asked last week to sign an online petition demanding the prosecution of Zimmerman. As I have noted, I believe that there is sufficient evidence for an indictment. However, I have never support such public campaigns for indictments. I do not believe in prosecution by plebiscite. Whether there are 100 or 100,000 people demanding an indictment, a prosecutor should not be influenced by such popular outcries. We saw how distortive and corrupting such campaigns can be on prosecutors like Michael Nifong. Prosecutors must based their decisions on the weight of the evidence not the weight of public opinion. Regardless of my views about a possible indictment, I would not want a prosecutor influenced by any petition supporting those views. There is a line between the visceral and the legal and such petitions fall on the wrong side of that line.
Source: Daily Mail
PJ:
“Instead of being led by your emotions, start thinking about what is said.”
*****************************
Keep talking. You’re making the Martin family case for them. The girlfriend’s affidavit completely disputes Zimmerman’s version of events about being attacked from behind. She did so without knowing what Zimmerman would say about the incident or even knowing he claimed to have been unknowingly attacked from behind. How does one act out of bias to discredit the statement of another when she has no idea what the other person said? Answer me that, oh, swami and I’ll concede the point.
The account presented by Martin’s girlfriend HURTS Martin.
Girlfriend; “He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on.”
Purpose? Obscure his identity? Any other good reason to put his hoodie on after noticing a man watching him?
Girlfriend; “Eventually, he would run, said the girl, thinking that he’d managed to escape. But suddenly the strange man was back, cornering Martin.”
So this 6’3″ 17 year old was running, and the pudgy 5’9″ 230 lb man caught him? And then VIA THE PHONE Martin’s girlfriend was able to identify that Zimmerman had “cornered” him? Give me a fuckin’ break.
Girlfriend; “Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell.”
What does “somebody pushing” sound like?
Instead of being led by your emotions, start thinking about what is said.
I don’t think that the right-wing/conservative defence of Zimmerman is primarily racially based.
I think it’s more the whole Homeland Security & ZOMG-there’s-a-threat paranoia.
Any suggestion that “the good guys” could be at fault is to be resisted. People yearn for certainty. They don’t want shades of grey. Note that I avoid the phrase ‘black and white’ – oops!
Zimmerman is in Neighbourhood Watch. He’s been described as a “watch captain” for goodness sakes. He’s a “good guy”.
To have the general populace accept that he’s actually a fantasising wingnut is to question the basis for a whole lot of comfort feelings.
It questions the sanity of the Stand Your Ground laws
It question the sanity of licencing someone like him carry a gun around the streets.
How many other armed wingnuts are out on the prowl, waiting to be the hero in their fantasy?
Oooh don’t go there.
Much more comforting to support the “good guys”.
Conservative Media Smears Trayvon Martin
Ben Adler on March 27, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167076/conservative-media-smears-trayvon-martin
Excerpt:
Most of the conservative media have not only sided with Zimmerman but smeared the dead boy. On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera suggested that Martin had invited trouble by wearing a hooded sweatshirt, as millions of law-abiding young Americans, myself included, regularly do. He later appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to defend himself from charges that he was blaming the victim. Bill O’Reilly commiserated with Geraldo that he was being unfairly maligned, just as O’Reilly had been when he said that a young woman who goes out and gets drunk invites whatever misfortune may subsequently befall her, including murder.
Other conservatives have gone to shocking and disgusting lengths to impugn Martin. The Daily Caller—a lowbrow smear machine run by the overgrown preppie Tucker Carlson—published Martin’s Twitter feed. The DC doesn’t explain why Martin’s tweets are even remotely relevant, because they are not. But the implication, just like reports that Martin was suspended from school for possessing an empty bag with traces of marijuana, is that by being a normal teenager he was a bad person who deserved what happened to him.
Some of the worst actors of all in this affair have been the local police, working in concert with lazy or biased reporters. They have taken Zimmerman’s word as fact, notwithstanding his enormous incentive to lie and the fact that the other witness, Martin, is dead at Zimmerman’s hand and unable to respond. Consider this sensationalized, one-sided, irresponsible lead from the Orlando Sentinel on Monday:
With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law-enforcement authorities told the Orlando Sentinel.
That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say.
It opens as if Martin beating up Zimmerman were established fact, when it is actually merely Zimmerman’s account. The police have repeatedly cited, and in this case leaked, Zimmerman’s side of the story as justification for their inaction. (Lawrence O’Donnell gave the Sentinel reporter an appropriate dressing down on MSNBC Monday night.)
Martin’s mother is understandably suspicious that the police are also behind the revelation of his school suspension.
Meanwhile, the conservative media has been eagerly lapping up these reports to justify Martin’s killing.
Much of the right wing media has sided with Zimmerman on starkly racial grounds. Consider this blog post from Red State:
The left is in full spin mode now that the crazies of the New Black Panther Party has assumed the spotlight in the Trayvon Martin controversy. They are in fact an arm of the Democrat party though. It’s just another example of how out of touch the Dem party has become to average folks. The NBP are embraced until of course they do something as crazy as putting a bounty on someone’s head until all the evidence is presented. The more we hear about this story the more evidence mounts that Zimmerman acted in self defense. He did have a broken nose and a head injury but all that evidence is brushed aside by the lefties. A witness stated that he was the one screaming for help but that is all but ignored by the left and race hustlers alike.
“Average folks,” apparently, are white people, not families like Martin’s. (If you’re wondering what the obscure, marginal New Black Panther Party has to do with this case, the answer is nothing. They’ve offered a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman, and right wingers are gladly pretending that this has something to do with everyone else who is concerned that Zimmerman may be getting away with murder.)
Even conservatives who have taken a reasonable stance on Martin’s murder itself are being deliberately blind about the larger implications. For example, multiple writers at National Review, while admitting Martin’s killing was unjustified, have complained that African-American politicians are noting that Martin was black and his assailant is Latino. “I do not think it is wise for the president to further inject race into the incident, when it’s not quite clear what role, if any, skin color played,” tsked NR’s Robert VerBruggen.
Veteran race-baiter Newt Gingrich concurred, calling Obama’s expression of concern for the role race may have played in Martin’s killing “disgraceful.” In a naked appeal to racist white sentiment disguised as a plea for color-blindness, Gingrich asked, absurdly, “Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be OK because it didn’t look like him?” Gingrich’s comments, just like Zimmerman’s claims, were uncritically recycled on conservative Web sites such as World Net Daily.
Elaine M.1, March 28, 2012 at 9:42 am
NRA Begins Selling Hoodies With Pocket To Conceal Handguns
————————————————-
Wow
Isn’t the crux of the NRA’s argument against gun control that most guns are owned by responsible people, usually rifles for hunters? Because this is a pretty blatant move towards supporting and capitalizing on a gun culture with a significantly different raison d’etre….
Are there any new gun control bills in the pipeline? ’cause I sure do hope so…
When in Doubt, Smear the Dead Kid
By David Weigel
Posted Tuesday, March 27, 2012
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/03/27/when_in_doubt_smear_the_dead_kid.html
http://rollingout.com/culture/george-zimmerman-son-of-a-retired-judge-has-3-closed-arrests/
@Mespo “That’s what your link says both explicitly and implicitly”
explicitly? Then you don’t know the meaning of the word “explicitly”.
911 is reserved for EMERGENCIES. Neighborhood Watch personnel are, as a general rule, told to report suspicious, but non-emergency, activity to the police department via the non-emergency line. Though those calls are recorded, they are not answered by emergency dispatch personnel.
The City Manager EXPLICITLY states that Zimmerman called the non-emergency number. That EXPLICITLY means that he did not place a 911 call.
You call it “hair splitting”. I call it a more accurate portrayal of the evidence.
The City Manager EXPLICITLY states that Zimmerman’s call was received by a “telecommunications call taker”. The only thing implied there is that a person answered the call instead of a machine.
The Conservative Agenda in the Trayvon Martin Case
By Kevin Drum
Mar. 27, 2012
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/conservative-agenda-trayvon-martin-case
Has there been any public controversy in recent memory as disheartening as the Trayvon Martin case? I don’t mean the killing of Martin itself, though. That’s certainly disheartening, but it’s hardly unique. I mean the political reaction to it.
A week ago, the worst I could say about right-wing reaction to the Martin case was that conservatives were studiously ignoring it. But that was a week ago. Since then, conservatives have entered the arena with a vengeance.
But why? At first glance, there’s no obvious conservative agenda here. They might, in the abstract, want to defend the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have suddenly drawn the public’s attention since the Martin shooting. But the shooting itself? There’s no special conservative principle at stake that says neighborhood watch captains should be able to shoot anyone who looks suspicious. There’s no special conservative principle at stake that says local police forces should barely even pretend to investigate the circumstances of a shooting. There’s no special conservative principle at stake that says young black men shouldn’t wear hoodies.
But as Dave Weigel points out today, the conservative media is now defending the shooter, George Zimmerman, with an almost messianic zeal. There’s a fake photo of Trayvon Martin making the rounds, and even after it was debunked it’s still making the rounds:
Why is the fake photo so popular? It’s part of a new cottage industry of “truth about Trayvon” content, calibrated to convince people that they really shouldn’t worry about the implications of this killing. Why, the kid wasn’t even a saint! He might have been shot after brawling with the man who creeply followed him around the gated community? The Drudge Report has become a one-stop shop for Trayvon contrarianism.
Unfortunately, it’s not really a cottage industry at this point. More like a mammoth, smoke-belching factory. When I opened my LA Times this morning, for example, I found Jonah Goldberg staring back at me, explaining that we shouldn’t really care about Trayvon Martin because:
Martin’s tragic death is a statistical outlier. More whites are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites (or “white Hispanics”). And far, far more blacks are killed by other blacks. Indeed, if we’re going to use the prism of race to analyze murder rates, then the real epidemic is that of black murderers.
Quite so. And that, it turns out, is the conservative principle that’s actually at stake here: convincing us all that traditional racism no longer really exists (just in “pockets,” says Goldberg) and that it’s whites who are the real racial victims in today’s America. Heh indeedy.
Thanks Elaine
“….“Zimmerman was standing over the body with — basically straddling the body with his hands on Trayvon’s back,” Cutcher said. “And it didn’t seem to me that he was trying to help him in any way. I didn’t hear any struggle prior to the gunshot.
“And I feel like it was Trayvon Martin that was crying out, because the minute that the gunshot went off, the whining stopped.”
The two women said they could not see whether Zimmerman was bruised or hurt. It was too dark.
“Selma asked him three times, ‘what’s going on over there?’ ” Cutcher said. “He looks back and doesn’t say anything. She asks him again, ‘everything OK? What’s going on?’ Same thing: looked at us, looked back. Finally, the third time, he said, ‘just call the police.’ ”
Two things: Z. got his kicks pointing the gun at Trayvon to savor the moment while Trayvon wailed his despair, as he knew he would soon be dead. A most heinious crime.
Z. had shot to kill, wanted him dead, knew he was dead and did NOT say call an ambulance. Was he in shock after killing someone? No, he was already covering his ass from the first words spoken. I
t was very cold blood.
The only thing he risked was a beating, hardly life or limb threatening violence.
But now he had his chance for revenge all on who had mistreated him in his life. A guy who has commited battery on a cop gets a license to carry a gun. Sheesh..
Does Floriday execute murderers. He should get it in which case.
Or lifetime buggery.
NRA Begins Selling Hoodies With Pocket To Conceal Handguns
The National Rifle Association has a new item in its online store: hoodies, with a special pocket designed to conceal a handgun. Hooded sweatshirts have taken on new meaning in the last week as a symbol for Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed while wearing one last month. Last week, Geraldo Rivera speculated that it was Trayvon’s hoodie that was to blame for his death, sparking widespread criticism. “We want concealed carry to fit around your lifestyle — not the other way around. That’s why we developed the NRAstore exclusive Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt,” reads the product description. If enough people buy them, Rivera may be right to assume some hoodies can be dangerous.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/03/27/453313/nra-begins-selling-hoodies-with-pocket-to-conceal-handguns/
In Trayvon Martin case, it’s not about the hoodie
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/27/2717397/its-not-about-the-hoodie.html
Excerpt:
This week, someone leaked information that Martin had been suspended from school for possessing an empty marijuana baggie. It was also reported that Zimmerman claims Martin attacked him from behind, a version of events supposedly corroborated by witnesses. This would contradict other witnesses (the ones police initially blew off or never even bothered to contact) who paint Zimmerman as the aggressor who followed and shot a black kid he found “suspicious.”
And beg pardon, but if some armed, unknown person were stalking you for some unknown reason, might you not choose to hit first and ask questions later?
But this is not about Trayvon Martin being an angel.
Geraldo Rivera of Fox “News” said last week that Martin died because of his choice of clothing. “His hoodie killed Trayvon Martin as surely as George Zimmerman did,” he said, arguing that seeing a “kid of color” wearing a hoodie ignites certain feelings of “scorn” and “menace.”
Rivera called the statement, for which he later apologized, “politically incorrect.” Actually, it was just cowardly and dumb. Unlike, say, sagging pants, a hooded sweatshirt is a functional garment, (i.e., it provides protection against cold and wet) that is worn by black, white, male, female, young, old, college kids and street kids. Martin wore his against a persistent drizzle as he walked home from 7-Eleven, but apparently, Rivera finds something sinister in black and brown kids wearing what everybody else wears in the rain. Shall we restrict them to umbrellas from now on?
But this is not about a fashion statement
As to what it is about, consider a passage in Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, in which she argue s that “what it means to be a criminal in our collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while the term black criminal is nearly redundant.”
Nearly redundant.
This, then, is what killed Trayvon Martin, the fact that we are so stubbornly convinced of that redundancy that a boy walking home carrying nothing more threatening than Skittles and iced tea can become a source of terror sufficient for a George Zimmerman to stalk him and to kill him.
It doesn’t matter if he wore a hoodie.
It doesn’t matter if he punched Zimmerman.
It doesn’t matter why he was suspended from school.
What matters is that he is unavailable for comment about those things, and always will be. What matters is that none of them changes the essential truth of what this is about.
Though innocent of any crime, Trayvon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman. He was sacrificed for all our fears.
What witnesses say in the Trayvon Martin case
By Moni Basu, CNN
3/28/12
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/27/justice/florida-teen-shooting-witnesses/index.html
Excerpt:
911 calls
Residents of the gated community heard the gunshot.
Seven 911 calls released by authorities document their fear.
Someone screams, “help, help!” in the background.
“There were gunshots right outside my house. There’s someone screaming. I just heard a guy shot,” a neighbor says. “Hurry up, they are right outside my house.”
Another man cries for help. Then the gunshot.
“Hurry, please. … There’s someone screaming outside,” a neighbor whispers. “There’s a gunshot. Hurry up. … There’s someone screaming. I just heard a gunshot.”
In another call, a woman begs the dispatchers to send help, saying someone is “screaming and hollering” for help.
Moments later, she describes a light at the scene of the shooting.
“Oh, my God,” she says. “There’s still somebody out there walking with a flashlight.”
Zimmerman’s call to police was among the 911 tapes released by police. Some people hear what sounds like a possible racial slur. CNN enhanced the sound of the 911 call, and several members of CNN’s editorial staff repeatedly reviewed the tape but could reach no consensus on whether Zimmerman used a slur.
Witnesses
Mary Cutcher was in her kitchen making coffee that night with her roommate, Selma Mora Lamilla. The window was open, she said.
“We heard a whining. Not like a crying, boohoo, but like a whining, someone in distress, and then the gunshot,” she said.
They looked out the window but saw nothing. It was dark.
They ran out the sliding glass door, and within seconds, they saw Zimmerman.
“Zimmerman was standing over the body with — basically straddling the body with his hands on Trayvon’s back,” Cutcher said. “And it didn’t seem to me that he was trying to help him in any way. I didn’t hear any struggle prior to the gunshot.
“And I feel like it was Trayvon Martin that was crying out, because the minute that the gunshot went off, the whining stopped.”
The two women said they could not see whether Zimmerman was bruised or hurt. It was too dark.
“Selma asked him three times, ‘what’s going on over there?’ ” Cutcher said. “He looks back and doesn’t say anything. She asks him again, ‘everything OK? What’s going on?’ Same thing: looked at us, looked back. Finally, the third time, he said, ‘just call the police.’ ”
Martin’s girlfriend
Benjamin Crump, the Martin family lawyer, says Martin’s girlfriend’s account of what happened connects the dots and destroys Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense.
The girl, who did not want to be identified, said she was on the phone with the teen before the shooting.
When Zimmerman got closer to Martin, she told her boyfriend to run, but Martin told her that he was not going to run, she said.
“What are you stopping me for?” Martin asked Zimmerman, according to the girl.
“What are you doing around here?” Zimmerman asked in response.
The girl said she then got the impression that an altercation was taking place and that someone had pushed Martin, because the headset fell out of his ear, and the phone shut off.
Sanford cops wanted to charge Zimmerman in Trayvon Martin case
Sanford cops asked prosecutors to file charges in the Trayvon Martin case, but the Seminole County State Attorney’s office held off.
By Frances Robles
3/27/12
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/27/2718130/sanford-cops-wanted-to-charge.html
SANFORD — Despite public claims that there wasn’t enough probable cause to make a criminal case in the Trayvon Martin killing, early in the investigation the Sanford Police Department requested an arrest warrant from the Seminole County State Attorney’s office, the special prosecutor in the case told The Miami Herald on Tuesday.
A Sanford Police incident report shows the case was categorized as “homicide/negligent manslaughter.”
The state attorney’s office held off pending further review, The Miami Herald has learned.
The Miami Gardens high school junior was killed Feb. 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. The 28-year-old insurance underwriter and college student was never charged, triggering a nationwide crusade on the dead teen’s behalf.
Asked to confirm that the police recommended a manslaughter charge, special prosecutor Angela Corey said: “I don’t know about that, but as far as the process I can tell you that the police went to the state attorney with a capias request, meaning: ‘We’re through with our investigation and here it is for you.’ The state attorney impaneled a grand jury, but before anything else could be done, the governor stepped in and asked us to pick it up in mid-stream.”
A capias is a request for charges to be filed.
The Seminole County State Attorney’s Office declined to comment on whether its prosecutors ever recommended against filing charges.
Fun things for black guys to do in Florida :
Follow a white guy
Get him riled up enough to attack you
Kill him
Note: You get extra bonus points for this if you are a black Muslim
A clarification regarding the collection of Zimmerman’s clothing…
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-27/news/os-trayvon-martin-question-answer-20120327_1_medical-examiner-releases-bodies-police-force
Claim: Sanford police failed to collect key evidence in the case: the clothing of George Zimmerman, the gunman who killed Trayvon.
Not true, police said. They took his clothing as well as Trayvon’s and packaged it for crime-lab analysis. A spokeswoman for Special Prosecutor Angela Corey would not disclose Tuesday where the clothing is now, but she wrote in an email that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement “is assisting with the processing of physical evidence.”
PJ,
http://rollingout.com/culture/george-zimmerman-son-of-a-retired-judge-has-3-closed-arrests/2/
http://www.sheriffs.org/content/nsa-statement-nw-tragedy-fl
PJ:
You’ve got a knack for hair splitting; it’s reading that’s got you foiled. No one said it was an emergency call, merely that he was talking to a Emergency 911 Dispatcher. That’s what your link says both explicitly and implicitly since Zimmerman’s voice is clearly heard on the released 911 tapes. Martin family lawyer, Ben Crump, has the audio affidavit and it was played for the press.
You’ll have to wait for that apology until you stumble onto to something that’s accurate. Keep pitching. I like batting practice.
Mespo,
Do you have a link to this sworn testimony of the girlfriend?
Mespo,
What gave you the idea that Zimmerman called 911?
He didn’t. He called a number that is given to neighborhood watch patrols.
Here’s the statement from the City Manager.
http://www.sanfordfl.gov/investigation/docs/Zimmerman_Martin_shooting.pdf
I’ll await your humble apology.